The Impact of Judicial Leadership on Consensus Formation: Evidence From the Supreme Court of Norway

Which judicial leaders are more successful in achieving consensus? This article examines the impact of the leadership of presiding justices on consensus formation on the Norwegian Supreme Court where cases are distributed randomly to two parallel decisional panels. We hypothesize that presiding justices with certain characteristics (e.g., gender and chief justice), when in charge of the decision-making process, are more willing and better able to forge consensus, which could lead to greater respect for courts and the rule of law. We account for a variety of characteristics of the justices, as well as several conditions under which the cases were decided. The results confirm that both chief justices and female justices, when operating as the presiding justice of the panel, are significantly more likely to steer the case towards a unanimous decision as compared to their fellow justices. Legal academics serving as presiding justices had no discernable impact on consensus formation. The results provide evidence outside the American context that chief justices and women justices have the ability to achieve greater consensus. As such, diversity and appointments have consequences for judicial leadership and for consensus formation on a court.